Tomorrow
Chapter 2: August
She knows.
She knows and she laughs at him, and she's mad.
The Veil is thin in the Bone Pit, even thinner than in Kirkwall, and the thought of what made it so – the blood of countless Tevinter slaves worked to death in these quarries – makes his stomach sick. Even more so when there is a tear, and a pride demon roars to life through the Fade, and several more slip through before the Veil fluctuates again and closes behind them.
She faces the pride demon alone. There's a crown of spiked ice around them, he doesn't know whether the demon cornered her or she did that on purpose, and she looks so ridiculously tiny against the gigantic bulk of the demon. He runs to her, bare feet steady on the ice –
The demon charges at her, and she's standing with her arms down, staff lowered, taunting, laughing. The creature roars furiously and runs into her.
"HAWKE-"
She moves.
The demon is too slow. A deafening roar cracks the air of the cave and – it crashes itself on the long razor-sharp icicles behind her, spearing the gigantic body on half. Its fire dims. Hawke looks at him and she laughs triumphantly, and he cannot look away.
She should have. The demon trashes once more, and his claws- his claws-
The creature fades, but Hawke falls down too.
"Anders!" she calls softly, and it's almost as bad as when she called his name from behind the closed doors, only now it's not him, he's been replaced, he can't help her, there's so much blood- anger takes control over that splinter of panic, and he tears down the sharp ice with brute force. The abomination is there in an instant, he's crossing the icy shards and cocooning her in a blue glow.
"Hawke! Shit, I leave you for one second," spits Varric from the other side of the cave, a black bruise blossoming on his cheek, but Fenris barely notices that. He feels the poisoned magic flow from the abomination and course through the frayed Veil, and this is not right, not right, not right.
"We need to get her outside," he barks, and surprisingly the mage does not object.
"Take her staff."
There is blood, so much blood on the stone as he follows him.
They finally get out, and they work together in a brisk but well-practiced manner, immobilising her, unfolding the bandages, pressing the healing poultice to her lips. Hawke is half-awake, her eyes are bright and wide with pain, and she does not protest when the mage is cutting down her tunic to reveal a singed, shallow slash from her collarbone to the hip.
He forces himself to look away.
"Could've sworn you've never seen a woman before, Fenris" she taunts. A snarl crosses his face and there is a thousand profanities he could use now, but he swallows them all and keeps silent. She knows for a fact that he has. "Though we usually do look better. Ow, shit! Careful, Anders-I guess the cries are different too."
So easy. So light-hearted. But his blood boils at the memory of her cries and he might just explode.
"Shut up, Hawke," says Anders, his voice marked with the Faded focus. "I'm trying to fix up an acre of skin here."
"All of you, shut up. I think Bianca might have gotten scratched." The dwarf is examining his crossbow, and for once Fenris is glad for a flash of familiar, relatively harmless madness. Hawke giggles, her voice high-pitched and light from blood loss.
"Would you look at that. She got scratched. Wish I knew how that is."
"Well, Chuckles, healers are a copper a dozen, but you should just try finding a good blacksmith."
"How about I smack you in the head and get you to a smithy then?" suggests Anders over the blue glow.
"I guess I'll just have a cleaned mechanism and a nice artisan finish on the lid."
Fenris leaves them to their bickering and sits on the sand with his back turned on Hawke, clearing his blade meticulously. He doesn't know about love, but he knows desire, and he despises himself for feeling it at the sight of her bleeding body. And he despises her for knowing it, and taunting him over it, a mark of shame…
"Fenris. Are you wounded?" she calls from behind.
"No." A ghost of smile appears on his face. "You stole my kill."
She lets out a bubbling laugh. "You totally had it coming. Anders, check him up, would you?"
This is also a part of a routine – she doesn't believe him to report his injuries anymore, not after he broke an arm once and she found out five days later. A wave of testing energy engulfs him for a split second and he doesn't even try to hide his disgust, but then it withdraws immediately. Evidently Anders does not wish to have any more contact with him than himself, so it's bearable.
"Nothing more than an elevated pulse, Hawke. Hopefully he can manage that on his own."
The lyrium flashes in pure white anger. The bastard-
The mage knows why Fenris' pulse is elevated, and the humiliation is almost as hot as the fury. He does not dare look at Hawke, instead imagining how wonderfully obscene sound Anders' heart would make if he tore it out of his chest and threw to Hawke's mabari.
Not that that wuss of a lapdog would eat it, of course.
"I can manage just fine without you, mage."
"Tell me that next time you slash through your pancreas. I'm sure it'll stitch itself together with hatred alone."
"No one is slashing through anything," says Hawke and there is steel in her voice. Fenris looks down. Anders hushes behind his back. "Unless it's firewood. Fenris, Varric, would you make camp? I have a feeling this is going to last a while."
"The more you speak, Hawke, the more you move your chest and ruin my handiwork. It's not exactly easy to patch it up without a scar, you know."
"I'd rather avoid that, if you would. Can you imagine ever getting naked in front of someone and having to explain that this is from the gigantic pride demon from under an old quarry-"
"What did I just say."
"I'm just saying it could kill the mood."
"Hush, Hawke."
She hushes.
Fenris finally turns around and immediately wishes he hadn't. He's heard that babble before, that half-conscious light-headed prattle that usually followed her injury. But this – this was somehow worse, with Hawke laying down in a puddle of her own blood and the abomination hunched over her, his glowing hands skimming across her chest. And it doesn't matter that he tells himself it's a patient-healer situation, that she is still perfectly decent in her breastband, that they are out in the open and there is him and Varric – the jealousy burns, not only for the closeness they share but also for the stinging fact that he would not be able to help her in the same way.
And so he moves to put up the tents, leaving the healer to tend to his patient, and trying his best not to think about who the healer and the patient are.
There is at least one comfort: now he is sure she knows his feelings.
Not that it changes anything, but she does.
-/-
He ends up sharing a tent with Varric.
When he thinks about it, it's obvious. He is definitely not sharing with Anders if either of them is to make it out alive, and Hawke has all the reasons not to want him sleeping next to her. He is not opposed to the dwarf either – he finds him an easy company at the very least, and less jarring than most.
What he is opposed to is the very logical fact that in this arrangement, Hawke is sharing the other tent with Anders.
He doesn't say it out loud. But in the night, he lies motionless and hardly breathing, focused not to miss a sound from the other side of their little camp.
He is so absorbed by listening that a quiet clearing of a throat makes him jump.
"So," says Varric casually, "are we going to talk about it, or are you going to sulk through the night and get out of here even crankier than usual?"
Fenris ignores him. He has no desire to become the subject of the dwarf's next anecdote.
"You know, she does it for you." Varric waits for him to raise to the bait, but when no reply comes, he continues anyway. "She doesn't mind sharing a tent with you. She's worried that you might."
He scoffs. In the darkness, he sees Varric shake his head.
"Shit, people are going to complain that I'm being too cheesy if I write it as it is. Reality has no sense of good drama."
"You never describe reality," he points out, and Varric sniggers.
"That's because I do have it. Go to sleep, elf. They are not screwing over there."
A blush creeps up to his ears, and he is glad for the dark. "Bold assumption."
"Ha! Not for Blondie's lack of will, that's for sure. But she's not that desperate yet."
Varric sounds so easily confident about it that Fenris' pride starts to waver. After all, there is no shame in asking for another's expertise…
"Dwarf."
"Elf." Varric mimics his dull tone, and he starts to second-guess whether this is a good idea to begin with. He blurts out the questions before he changes his mind.
"Does she love him?"
"Huh." There is a tone of contemplation in the dwarf's voice, as if he is really considering it, and Fenris finds himself anxiously awaiting the answer. Varric has his shortcomings, and he himself seems to be safely out of reach for any romance, but he knows human hearts well. And, which is important, in a decidedly different way that Fenris. "I think she does. It's different, though."
His own heart sinks. "Different how?" he asks, and he feels like he's drowning in all the unspoken things this implies. Of course. Of course she does.
"Don't quote me on that, elf… but I'd bet my money on the platonic option. Loving, but not in love."
Fenris repeats that sentence in his head and it feels like a lifeline he does not deserve. "That doesn't make sense." He doesn't know love, but he's heard one knows when one loves. And when one does know, one acts on it… But there is no sound from the other tent.
"Look, elf, you need to remember that things were different before we stumbled onto you." Varric's voice is hushed now, more introspective. "She ever told you about the Red Iron? That merc band is no joke, and she ended up on the top, one doglord apostate refugee with nothing to her name. Then she killed their leader, less than a month after she'd left. And it's been just Aveline and her, and the other two Hawkes, for all that time… That changes you. Then I show up, get the expedition together, and then we find Blondie."
Fenris listens. He is familiar with the story, but he's never considered this angle of it. He knows the Red Iron and he's aware that Hawke served with them, but he never thought about the jarring difference between the cold-blooded mercenaries and Hawke's colourful, witty demeanour.
"She'd had two mages around her for most of her life, and then suddenly there was no one, and the world was falling apart with the Blight and dragons and shit. So here's where Blondie comes in. He was different too, at the beginning." He can hear the nostalgia in Varric's voice. "Big head with big dreams and big ideals. Like a steaming pot of inspiration. And boy, did she need that. I'm not a fan of that weird magic stuff, but there's just some connection you immediately catch after being told you both can shoot sparkles out of your fingers, and he was just what she needed."
He wants to scoff and sneer, but despite himself, he understands. And it makes her offer to go accompany Orana – just wanted you to talk to someone who's been through the same thing – all the more meaningful, and his tantrum all the more shameful.
"They've been friends for years now, elf. Before you even came round, and then after she got smitten with you. Everybody knows he worships the ground she walks on, but who cares? She'd die for him. He'd die for her. That's all that matters."
Fenris lets out a heavy breath. All Varric has done is made it slightly more difficult to hate Anders; but he did nothing to quell the flames of jealousy inside him.
He'd die for her too.
Does she love me? He doesn't dare ask that question. Even if she did, he wouldn't know how to reciprocate: all he's got to share is anger and violence, and he's promised himself never to throw it on her again.
He opts for an easier question.
"What was she like? Before… him?" Before me?
"Colder," says Varric after a moment of consideration. "More broken. Less hopeful. More ruthless. Then the expedition gave her something to hold on to, and Blondie the means to actually follow through with it." He pauses for a moment, then adds: "Mind you, I haven't actually seen the worst of it. Aveline has."
Fenris nods.
Hawke is a world-changer, a rule-breaker, an unbound, spinning firestorm of change. He hasn't given much thought on the Hawke-refugee.
"And whatever you say about Blondie, he's got a heart twice the size of Thedas. He won't leave that clinic, for everything that the Carta does to make his life miserable."
"He's possessed," snaps Fenris angrily.
"Hey, never said that he had the brains to match."
Fenris turns in his sleeping bag so he faces the dwarf now. "Tell me the truth," he demands with urgency that seeps into his voice despite himself, and wants to continue but Varric chuckles.
"You sure? No-one ever asks for truth. Truth's boring."
"Yes. No lies, dwarf. No pretty stories made to sound good." He takes a deep breath. "Tell me what I am. For Hawke."
Varric makes a deep humming sound in his throat, something that reminds him of Tivus, a slave he knew in Danarius' mansion: a blood sacrifice, with his tongue cut out as a punishment for screaming.
It is not a good memory, and he winces.
"That's why you're so bad at cards, elf."
"How is this relevant?" Fenris blinks the memory away and looks at the dwarf, confused. He must have missed something.
"You give away your hand too early. That's the boring truth here. See, it's not exactly a secret between our little merry band that you two had a thing, and for someone who apparently ended the thing, you pine in the most outrageous way." Fenris wants to protest, the blush of shame and humiliation creeping back on his ears, but the dwarf holds up his hand.
"Hear me out. Maker knows what Hawke is thinking about this, but it's pretty clear that you have no idea what you want. So either you are the long game sort of player, with some brilliant strategy behind it all, or you're just trashing around and confusing everybody. And as long as you do that, she can't really react."
Fenris turns his head.
Guys like him don't know what they want. That's what Isabela said to her that evening…
But Fenris knows what he wants. He wants to be free, with no looming threat of the master to haunt him, and he wants Hawke as a boon of that freedom, and as so much more too.But whether he dares –
That's another matter entirely.
"Whatever you did, it scared the shit out of her. So she won't make a move again. If I were to bet my money on what it was, I'd say something slavery-related, and that's heavy stuff, elf. And I don't mean that in the stupid way. Heavy on her too, as much as it'd be only a fraction of what you have. She's your leader, not your mistress, and whatever happens now she'll force the choice back into your hands, because that is the single healthy way it can possibly work."
Fenris' breath catches in his throat. Is that it? Is that… the reason for everything?
His choice. His will. His freedom. A boon, and a burden of a masterless existence – his decisions remain his, and the consequences are also his, and oh, a part of him would love Hawke to come and command him to be her lover – but he cannot have that. Not with the pride stiffening his neck. He walked away from her, and he made a choice, and so she…
...She respects it.
He turns away from the dwarf, staring at the linen of the tent.
"Hey, elf."
"Dwarf." His voice is hollow.
"She cares about you, though. If you really need me to discover it."
He doesn't – he sees it every day in her quips that are just a touch too careful, and in the stained parchment of the scrolls marking slavers' dens. But it feels good to hear it out loud.
He'll leave, eventually. Perhaps tomorrow. But now it doesn't feel like the right time.
-/-
They spend another day clearing out the Bone Pit, then another searching for a couple of ingredients that the herbalist in the Gallows asked for, and then they get delayed by a band of Tal-Vashoth, and before Fenris realises it they have been gone from Kirkwall for almost a week. He enjoys being out in the open, but their leathers are starting to stink.
The company is easy, and even the abomination is less hateful after Fenris knows what he is to Hawke. Once she refers to the Tal-Vashoth as the Qunari, and when he corrects her she asks him to explain. So he clarifies the meanders of the Qun as well as he can, unwittingly mimicking Varric in his manner of storytelling, and that makes her laugh. He tells her of the kossith race, of Koslun, of the Triumvirate and the Tamassran. She is surprised that he speaks the language, and he is surprised how quickly she picks up the basic concepts, foreign as they are to the chaotic, individual-based culture of Thedas. They get into a heated dispute about it, and he discovers with a kind of shameful relief that she's fine with him arguing with her, as long as he's got arguments to support it.
He's got all the arguments.
"How is that debasing, Hawke? Their society is far more stable than yours, and the Tamassran know exactly how to use up the best of one's potential. If you're strong, you're a warrior. If you decide that you'd rather be wise than strong, you move on to priesthood and science. This is the choice many Thedosians lack."
"Not again," mutters Varric and slows his pace to leave at least three steps' gap between them. Anders casts a passing glance at Hawke's face, hesitates, and joins the dwarf behind them. Fenris is glad.
Her eyes shine. "How is that not debasing? You're binding your own mind to the service of a gigantic sentient machine. I'd rather be poor and my own woman than a peg in someone else's plan."
"How gracious of you. I'm sure all the beggars of Thedas would agree, given the choice. But the Qun is not only for the material wellbeing, it's meant to give purpose. Is that not the entire notion of destiny you humans are so fond of? The Qun is just a practical measure to reach it."
Something flickers in her eyes, a memory of an old fire, and he wants to ask.
"Destiny is malleable, Fenris. Which, I suppose, makes it a rather lousy destiny, or no destiny at all."
"So you don't believe in one's greater purpose."
"Oh, I do." She throws her back and looks at the night sky. There's a distant glow on the horizon, the promise of Kirkwall's warmth and rest not so far away. "See, this is exactly the problem with the Qun. They presume you're born with your potential, and that what they give you is meant to unlock it, as if you're just a bred resource." Her gaze flickers to him, and yet again he feels a sting of shame for his outburst several days ago. "But for such a complicated philosophy, they fail to see the obvious - you don't have a pre-described potential to be cultivated by the Tamassran, they just grow you into it. It's life that creates you, Fenris, it's your own choices that shape your purpose, and that's just as much of a destiny as I will ever believe in."
"So you would have blind chance guide you instead?"
She flashes a smile. "No, Fenris. I'll have me guide me instead."
He shakes his head at that. Maybe the Qun is too much of a foreign concept after all.
